Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Weaving the Web

September 9, 2005
Rev. Amy Zucker Morgenstern

What, I have been asked, is my vision for UUCPA? My spiritual goal for myself, for each of you, and this congregation we love, is integrity: harmony between our outer words and deeds and our inner convictions and dreams. I want the church to help us become those people of integrity, and I want the church as an institution as a body beyond the sum of its individual-people parts to grow in integrity. In my vision for UUCPA, I see a place where we are empowered and challenged to act upon our most important beliefs. In one way, this vision can be summarized in two words, words UUCPA has used before to summarize its mission: justice and community. But the words are too vague to convey the vision I have in my heart, so I will expand this time on what I mean by justice. (Community is for an upcoming column.)

Justice flows naturally out of integrity because when we see a gap between the way we know things should be and the way they are, we are moved to close that gap. Otherwise it remains a wound within ourselves, a crevasse between our beliefs and our actions. To give just one example, recently shared by Trustee Maribea Berry, we feel the uncomfortable edge of that crevasse when our children want to know why that man lives on the street, and why we don’t do more to help him.

Each of us alone, and even all of us together as a church, are too small to solve all of the troubles of the world. But it makes all the difference in the world when we commit to be creators of justice.

So the first half of my vision is this: as a church with integrity, we know ourselves, and are known, as justice-makers. We take our convictions out into the community; we are determined to change the world. When we sing the glorious vision of a land where ‘justice shall roll down like waters, and peace like an everflowing stream,’ we resolve in our hearts to build that land. In my vision, when people think UUCPA, they think of that community that is always working to make the world more free, kind, fair, and beautiful. We take action as a church, as we have done many times in our history, to aid refugees and the elderly, people without housing and people without partners, children whose schools have failed them and neighbors whose government denies them their civil rights.

And since we all struggle against our own hypocrisy and confusion, we compassionately help each other to bridge the gap between our convictions and our choices. We help each other to reflect on our difficult ethical questions: How do I reconcile my essential pacifism with the need to confront terrifying violence? How do I live according to principles of ‘right livelihood’ when I have to support my family in an economic system I didn’t design and cannot control? How do I engage in my culture without becoming entangled in those of its values that I despise? There are no simple answers, but as a justice-making community, we promise to help each other ask the questions in the honesty that is the lifeblood of integrity.

I love UUCPA for making the making of justice so central to its being, and in my vision of my ministry here, I keep justice at the heart of what we do.

— Blessings,
Amy